Daily Management Review

Links Between Antidepressants & Birth Defect Risks Become Clearer


07/16/2015


The latest study shows that the usage of Paxil or Prozac by a woman during her conception can lead to a birth defect in her baby.



Los Angelis, California – 15 July 2015 – A recent study carried out by the government has given “sweeping” outcome, whereby it was found that “older” Paxil and Prozac, these two antidepressants, cause “birth defects”.  This news created quite a bit of commotion.
 
However, “other popular treatments” of this genre, subjects of a “major lawsuit” for inducing defects at birth, were “cleared” by the said study. The enlisted cleared medicines include Pfizer's Zoloft and Celexa. As per the previous studies, antidepressants were subject to doubtful claims, especially a particular “class of drugs”, namely the “Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRIs”. In fact, the United States’ “Food and Drug Administration” had to issue a warning against these treatments as safety measurements, whereby discouraging consummation of them during the period of pregnancy.
 
Nevertheless, the recently the British Medical Journal published the latest study reports wherein U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s researchers got together to find out whether the entire series of drugs from this class results into “birth defect risk” or “only selected treatments” are responsible for it. Almost “28,000 women” were interviewed in order to study whether they consumed any of the followed drugs, “Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft”, during the first three months of their pregnancy. Based on their answers the team of researchers examined which one of them “bore children with birth defects”.
 
The results found by them showed that all antidepressants were not the cause of birth defects. As per their findings, Zoloft, Lexapro, and Celexa, were not agents of birth defects, while Paxil, mostly sold as “fluoxetine” and Prozac as “paroxetine”, were both “implicated” as causing risks of birth defects. The score of the women consuming the latter two drugs during their conception period were rated in every “2 to 3.5” women.
 
The case studied brought forward a patient who used Prozac during her pregnancy and gave birth to a baby whose skull was distortedly formed; while similarly in another case wherein Paxil was used the baby was diagnosed of anencephaly at birth and was born with intestines protruding “outside the body”. In the case of anencephaly babies are usually born with “missing parts of the brain and skull”.
 
Moreover, Prozac and Paxil were also “linked” with “a heart defect”. However, the researchers informed that such risks were noted to be appearing on a small scale. In fact, the case studies testified that the “risk” of anencephaly at birth rose to seven in every ten thousand women who took “paroxetine” in their pregnancy, while earlier it was noted that only two among ten thousands were such targets. Nevertheless, there is no certainty involved in the results acquired by the researchers; one can only find links on the basis of analysis which points fingers at the consummation of both the drugs and birth defects. However, it still remains to be see whether the drugs actually “caused the deformities”.




References:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/09/us-usa-health-antidepressants-idUSKCN0PJ2T320150709